cognisonance

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Posts by cognisonance

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  97

  I did it !!!!

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  7 years ago i started on a path i had long ago given up on as impossible.

  i met with my elders and told them i could not justify carrying on as a jw.

  i went and got my high school qualifications and my higher education diploma (a levels with distinction) in just 12 months.

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  cognisonance

  As someone trying to go back to school, that's awesome! Thanks for the encouraging example.
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  21

  The first step toward apostasy

  by Socrateswannabe in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  "the first step toward apostasy is a drop in field service activity.

  i have read that statement in wts publications and heard it many times from the platform.

  i haven't studied philosphy so i'm not sure what type of logical fallacy this is an example of, but it is one for sure.

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  cognisonance

  I'll take a stab... Slippery slop is probably the best fit, but I think this is also a case of Affirming the Conseqent.

  "The first step toward apostasy is a drop in field service activity."

  More formerly we could phrase this as (since the Watchtower is trying to apply that to you, the reader as a warning):

  If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

  You are beinging to not participate in field serivce

  Therefore you are becoming an Apostate.

  Compare this with:

  If it's raining then the streets are wet.

  The streets are wet.

  Therefore, it's raining.

  This is fallacious because it could be wet because it just finished raining, or it snowed/snowing and the snow melts, or it flooded, or a watermain broke, etc.

  More formally, these statements can be summerized as:

  If P then Q.

  Q.

  Therefore, P.

  What is logically sound would be:

  Modus Ponens	Modus Tollens
  If p then q. p. Therefore, q.	If p then q. Not-q. Therefore, not-p.

  So back to the JW statement. These would be acceptable:

  If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

  You are becomming an appostate

  Therefore you don't participate in field service

  and

  If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

  You are still fully active in field service

  Therefore you aren't becoming an apostate.

  But something tells me that looking at that last example, while logically sound, it's based on a premise that is probably also another logic fallacy, A hasty generalization. It could be possible the "first step" is something else (independent thinking, a scandel, intellectual honesty, etc) or that an "apostate" could be still going in field service to put up a facade.
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  18

  A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

  by Pyramid God in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.

  during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .

  after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.

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  cognisonance

  BluesBorther,

  I think JWs now allow for Micro Evolution, and all of what we species are is based on our DNA and the resulting proteins that regulate our bodies. These change via mutation (though I think the expresion of our DNA via epigenetic events like methylation could allow for non-mutations to bring about changes, but I don't know if this has much to do with evolution). Nonetheless, I think what is happening is the old line "Mutations are always harmful," maybe it is just an artifact of old beliefs that never got updated? If that position is still in effect, then yes, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, can't have it both ways.
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  I found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent Robert Reich documentary: Inequality for All.
• 
  35

  What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

  by Pacopoolio in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i had a bunch of tiny little nags that always bothered me about the bible/god/etc.

  that eventually led to me drifting away, but this was my personal, singular issue that no one could address.

  i think i mentioned it before here, but, for summation again:.

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  cognisonance

  The flaw(s) for me were in how they misrepresented science and secular sources.

  I was born in and the mind control was strong with me unfortunately. But the two brochures on Was Life Created and the other one dealing with 5 questions got me really thinking. I decided I wanted to independently study evolution (read the book "Why Evolution is True") then came back to those brochures, then looked up the references. Then I took a look at the evolution book, reasoning book, and Is There A Creator book. The later had a quote about intellectual honesty, and what they failed to include was that in addition to having an open mind about views contrary to our own, we should also disclose opposing views to others when talking about our own. In short, we shouldn't sweep with Occam’s broom inconvenient truths under the rug. Of course they didn't talk about that, choosing to sweep that inconvenient point away as well. I also became more aware of the logic fallacies being used in the literature via doing my indepenpent study (specifically studied logic fallacies).

  Also there was an article on higher education that insinuated that going to college isn’t correlated with getting a good job. They quote an article incorrectly to essentially say this. What the article was really saying was that going to an Ivy League private prestigious school isn’t correlated with getting a better job than if similarly bright students were to go to public state colleges. Quite a different thing than comparing going to college vs not going to college.

  As regards doctrines aside form evolution, I just went along with them even if sometimes they didn’t make much sense to me. Again the mind control was strong with me and I just followed what I was told most of the time. It’s really a shame since it took a while for the damage to be undone. I found myself after being out of the cult, consulting scientific literature to form my opinions on things, not bad per se, but still my critical thinking was a bit dual because I still found it difficult to think fully on my own. I took about 2 years to undo the damage from the cult. Good riddens!
• 
  35

  What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

  by Pacopoolio in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i had a bunch of tiny little nags that always bothered me about the bible/god/etc.

  that eventually led to me drifting away, but this was my personal, singular issue that no one could address.

  i think i mentioned it before here, but, for summation again:.

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  cognisonance

  Pacopoolio,

  Sounds like you came across, independently perhaps, with the idea of determinism. You might enjoy reading this book: Freedom Evolves by Dannel Dennnet.
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  15

  New Watchtower Article: "Morals Without God?"

  by cognisonance in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  ...or rather what you wouldn't find in a watchtower .

  morals without god (new york times article).

  can we envision a world without god?

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  cognisonance

  ...or rather what you wouldn't find in a watchtower :

  Morals Without God (New York Times Article)

  Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a moral abyss.
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  23

  Every JW should pay attention to Steven Pinker's lecture: A History of Violence

  by cognisonance in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  came across this lecutre (or alternatively you can read the transcript) in a class from yale on moralities of everyday life:.

  a history of violence edge master class 2011some excepts:.

  "believe it or notand i know most people do notviolence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.".

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  cognisonance

  Came across this lecutre (or alternatively you can read the transcript) in a class from Yale on Moralities of everyday life:

  A History of Violence Edge Master Class 2011

  Some excepts:

  "Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

  "The fourth historical decline of violence has been called the "Long Peace." It speaks to the widespread belief that the 20th century was the most violent in history, which would seem to go against everything that I've said so far. Peculiarly, one never sees, in any of the claims that the 20th century was the most violent in history, any numbers from any century other than the 20th.

  There's no question that there was a lot of violence in the 20th century. But take, for comparison, the so-called peaceful 19th century. That "peaceful" century had the Napoleonic wars, with four million deaths, one of the worst in history; the Taiping Rebellion in China, by far the worst civil war in history, with 20 million deaths; the worst war in American history, the Civil War; the reign of Shaka Zulu in southern Africa, resulting in one to two million deaths; the war of the Triple Alliance, which is probably the most destructive interstate war in history in terms of percentage of the population killed, namely 60 percent of Paraguay; the African slave raiding wars (no one has any idea what the death toll was); and of course, imperial wars in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific.

  These remarks are all qualitative, meant to damp down the tendency to think that just because in Europe there was a span of several decades without war, that the world as a whole was peaceful in the 19th century as a whole.

  What about genocide? The last couple of graphs plot what are called "state-based conflicts, where you have two organized armed forces fighting, at least one of which is a government. What about cases in which governments kill their own citizens? Again, there's a cliché that the 20th century was the Age of Genocide. But the claim is never made with any systemic comparison of previous centuries.

  Historians who have tried to track genocide over the centuries are unanimous that the notion that the 20 th was "a century of genocide" is a myth. Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, their The History and Sociology of Genocide, write on page one, "Genocide has been practiced in all regions of the world and during all periods in history."

  What did change during the 20th century was that for the first time people started to care about genocide. It's the century in which the word "genocide" was coined and in which, for the first time, genocide was considered a bad thing, something to be denied instead of boasted about.

  As Chalk and Jonassohn say of ancient histories, "We know that empires have disappeared and that cities were destroyed, and we suspect that some wars were genocidal in their results. But we do not know what happened to the bulk of the populations involved in these events. Their fate was simply too unimportant. When they were mentioned at all, they were usually lumped together with the herds of ox and sheep and other livestock."

  To give some examples: if Old Testament history were taken literally, there were genocides on almost every page; the Amalakites, Amarites, Canaanites, Hivites, Hitites, Jevasites, Midianites, Parazites and many other. Also, genocides were committed by the Athenians in Melos; by the Romans in Carthage; and during the Mongol invasions, the Crusades, the European wars of religion, and the colonization of the Americas, Africa and Australia.
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  2

  Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

  by cognisonance in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'covert messiah' conference at conway hall in london on the 19th of october to present this controversial discovery to the british public.. http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm.

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  cognisonance

  Biblical scholars will be appearing at the 'Covert Messiah' Conference at Conway Hall in London on the 19th of October to present this controversial discovery to the British public.

  http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm
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  55

  "You knew what the consequences were when YOU decided to leave The Truth. This is YOUR decision and the outcome is YOUR responsibility."

  by nicolaou in

  1. social
  2. family

  how many of us have had to deal with a version of that retort?!

  it's hurtful and i suspect - for some - that's partly because of the nagging feeling that our families may have a point.. but do they?.

  i was 15 when i got baptised, is it reasonable that as the 50 year old man i'll be on my next birthday i continue to be held to a decision i made as a schoolboy?.

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  cognisonance

  I enjoyed this thread, as I have heard that line before and it always burned me up inside. The blame is being put on us. By their logic, our loved ones too made a decision and have responsibility. After all they signed up for this religion too, which should mean it has the consequences of having to shun anyone that leaves, even a family member, or risk loosing their "relationship with god" or getting kicked out too.

  I know some family and friends of mine who struggle with shunning me, doing it becuase they think it's the "right thing to do" or is required of them, but I can tell they really don't want to have to do it. They are just as "free" to not shun me as I was to leave. In the end, it's much easier to just blame me instead and say this is all my fault, not see that the problem is with the religion.